Espionage and America

Posted by Aneela Shahzad
on January 25, 2015

It was only after eighty years of constant wars in Europe that the peace of Westphalia was signed (1648) and this bewildered part of humanity, for the first time endorsed the right of a state to its sovereignty, freedom of choice to its people and non-intervention of one state in the internal affairs of another state; a people for whom war was the answer to every question, before then.

But as the fear of war between states was dissolved, the trend of secret espionage and covert interference took the steady rise.

Why is espionage covert: because it is morally wrong to put your nose into other people’s matters, but it is also morally defensible on the grounds that the other is a potential/real enemy, therefore espionage gains legitimacy only on grounds of defense. However if espionage is done to destabilize the other country; to secure one’s political/economic interests over the others; or to satisfy savage imperial desires, it has absolutely no moral standing.

This is exactly the reason that the American people, aware of their heavily relied upon spy industry and its world-wide penetration, gadget with highly advanced technology and copious research, bear with it, thinking that it acts for the defense of their nation and wishfully thinking that it acts for the defense of humanity.

Therefore it would be easy for any American citizen to understand the need of prosecuting any spy who has connived against them, as they would think that the interferer tried to disrupt the peace and progress their nation stands for. And no ethical American would think it to be right for any of its own citizen to do the same in the other’s country; to disrupt the other’s peace. The appeal to the common sense of the American people would then be: ‘understand and admit that you are not saviours of humanity, as you wish to be, you have only severed it, spilled its blood and destroyed its progress; there is no real democracy in any one of the states you have occupied or intruded in’, ‘it’s time for you to leave humanity alone, so it can find peace for itself.’

Legitimacy Against Caught Spies:

Jonathan Pollard - when the US caught Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard in 1985, he was given a life sentence, he had confessed his crime. He was an intelligence analyst and later after his conviction he was also linked with Benami Kadesh another convicted spy. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has voiced particularly strong support for him and has recently called upon president Obama to have him released on humanitarian grounds and repeatedly asserts that ‘Pollard never did any espionage’as if asserting that ‘might is right’.

Dr. Fai - On the other hand, Pakistan has stayed relatively quiet over the issue of Dr. Fai, a known philanthropist, who was arrested by the FBI in July, 2011 for allegedly accepting money from Pakistan’s ISI to lobby and influence the U.S. government on the Kashmir issue, in violation of FARA. The FARA is an act requiring any lobbyist to register with the government, and has a history of having the alleged party to reconcile with this requirement of the government rather than to prosecute the alleged to imprisonment. According to the Justice Department, there are reportedly about 1,700 lobbyists representing more than 100 countries in the US, therefore it can be understood that lobbying is not a crime in this country but a welcome possibility. The crime is only that Dr. Fai did not register, to evade tax and allegedly to hide that the ISI was funding him, but the irony of the matter is that there is no trial for the two congressmen, J. R. Pitts and Dan Burton, who both received funds from Dr. Fai and whom being at the top of legislation, seem to have no responsibility of verifying Dr. Fai’s credentials before accepting the money, perhaps they were unaware that they are being lobbied when money was being transferred to their accounts; as ‘they thought Dr. Fai was voicing a just cause’ before they had gotten news of the case, which perhaps was exactly what Dr. Fai was thinking before the Indians lobbied to have him linked with the ISI, of which the Indians have an old paranoia. The cusp of the matter is: was the cause a just one; did Dr. Fai conspire to disrupt peace anywhere around the world or did he try to return it for a people. Was Dr. Fai not voicing the right of self-determination, dispensed to him and the Kashmiri people, by the UN resolutions?

Dr. Shakeel Afridi - Now in the case, when Pakistan has prosecuted, through court, a Dr. Afridi, for treason against the state, not for being an aide against the so called War on Terror but for breaching the sovereignty of the state and the trust of his people, the American people seem to degrade the right of the Pakistani nation to its integrity and internal peace; would they allow any of their citizen to facilitate us for any cause, however noble, from their soil. All this in the event that Pakistan has proven to be practically the biggest ally of the US/NATO in this WOT. (Details of Afridi case will come later)

Is This Equality And Freedom - Does this mean that if one is found, struggling for a just cause, in your country, you will not take him for his nobility and entrap him in the many-folds of your legislature AND when one is found ignobly defacing our country’s image internationally by acting over and above the state machine, when the state is already complying to the cause of WOT, you show deterrence against us. Is there two laws for two different sections of humanity, are we not free to enact our law, when you are free to enact yours Are all human not equal, are nations not free!

The War on Terror and CIA - Although the CIA is self-mandated to collect information; conduct emergency tactical operations; carry out covert operations; and exert foreign political influence through its tactical divisions, still as a subsidiary of the United States government, it has to fall back to the ‘morality principle’; it cannot be let loose as a lethal force not answerable to anything!

Since the eruption of Terrorism throughout the globe, from which no society can consider itself safe anymore, as it can erupt right in your backyard, without pre-caution and the following self-championing of the US to war against it, the CIA has automatically been promoted to be a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ pursuing the US mandate of the WOT.

The CIA has practically become a second wave of terror, wherever the first wave surges, that is what happened in Abbottabad. As the US heedlessly superimposed its mandate over the globe, perhaps in its arrogance, it granted the CIA to freely conduct throughout the civilized world without being bound in any law or being answerable for any morality. It was allowed to use reckless and trained-to–kill forces like the Blackwater, and to conduct covert missions to its will, under the security of the US, NATO and the UN. So today they deem it their right to breach in the sovereignty of nations, buy and use their citizen, not realizing perhaps that in their run, they have destroyed the peace of nations, shattered their integrity and shaken the possibility of their progress for long times to come.

In fact when proofs of attempted covert operations are found in a target country, such as ours, it is only sensible for us to associate it with the most terrifying of possibilities, for to think of intrusion as a matter of triviality would only be naïve of us as a nation; for whatever is done covertly is apt to have the most vicious of designs and should be linked to all/any activities that are not normal to human behaviour and to the history of our communities; from terror-attacks to the en-bafflement of the society.